Ulvi Yurtsever wrote:

>I never understood why "pure" music is seen as intellectual or cerebral
>etc.  To me it feels exactly the other way around, if anything, opera is
>more intellectual.

I hope I am not expected to believe that La Nozze di Figaro is more
intellectual than say, die Grosse Fuge, die Kunst der Fuge, or Boulez's
Pli Selon Pli.

>In opera you need to follow the plot, and for that you need to understand
>the motivations and personalities of the protagonists...

It is very rare except perhaps in something like Berg's Wozzeck that there
is genuine unity between the music and the text rather than the music being
the only justification for a text, regarded as no more than a crude and
often mildly embarassing scaffolding which permits the different musical
bits and pieces to coalesce without things becoming too hopelessly
hodge-podge.

>In fact, many of the highly intellectual people I know who love opera love
>it for the very reason that it provides such a fascinating historical and
>sociological commentary on the times and societies it either depicts, or,
>by reference, it addresses itself to.

Of course one can resurrect any piece of operatic mediocrity and
intellectualise it by talking on and on about the socialogical millieu
of the time.  Whether any minor opera can be regarded as intellectual in
a purely musical sense as a result is highly questionable.  I do agree
however that such intellectualised commentaries are certainly a most useful
aide in that one can then endulge in trite operatic sweetmeats without
developing too bad a conscience.

>On the other hand, for me listening to music should, ideally, remove me
>as far away from intellectual activity as possible; in the sense that
>the effect of music (the effect that I care about, anyway) is purely to
>the emotions and nothing else (an idealized description, but words are
>inadequate here as we all know).

Sums up the opera lover's epicurian view of music.  Nothing wrong with this
of course except where one ruthlessly demands the utmost profundity and
spirituality from music without compromise.  Perhaps this may seem like
hairshirt austerity, hence the importance of manufacturing intellectualised
interpretations of Mozart's Figaro (the subversive social revolutionary),
Don Giovanni (existential hero) and the like so we can indulge in this with
a clean conscience from time to time.

>But what is this "intellectual rigor" in the works of the great masters?
>It sounds so unappetizing; I would never want to listen to intellectually
>rigorous music knowingly.

You do this all the time listening to your beloved Bach Ulvi.

>You need to keep in mind that "intellectual rigor" is often an
>after-the-fact construction by music scholars.

I don't think even Mozart thought this way about composition.  He of all
composers stressed that composition was not effortless as some presumed it
was for him but that he had painstakingly studied the works of past masters
over and over again.

>Bach did not have counterpoint books from which to learn rigorous
>composition procedures; instead, those books came later from scholars who
>tried (and miserably failed, in my opinion) to encode what made Bach's
>music great in a manageable number of algorithms (or "rules").

No the teaching of counterpoint at this time was not one to the effect
that it was 'intuitive' and 'emotional' but rather heavily laden with the
burden of formal principles handed down to them.  That is why many of the
his contempories felt a need to rebel against this, hence driving music
towards a more homophonic style.  I am sure Bach would have at some time
been drilled in the study of the counterpoint of composers like Palestrina.

Lastly it does depend on what one means by 'intellectual'.  If this means
something merely calculating then this is a misunderstading.  I use the
term in the sense of the German word 'Geistlich' which can just as much
mean 'spiritual'.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
[log in to unmask]